Fraser Flats Habitat Project

Grand County residents have been at the forefront of water issues in the West. They were the water supplier of the first major trans-mountain diversion project in Colorado and since then have been supplying water to Front Range municipalities. These diversions have also led Grand County residents and Trout Unlimited to be at the forefront of a new initiative- Learning by Doing. Learning By Doing (LBD) is a collaborative group of water stakeholders — including water utilities, nonprofit organizations and county agencies — that meet regularly to monitor river health and undertake projects that safeguard Grand County’s home waters.

LBD has already solved some issues including sending additional flows in Ranch Creek, Vasquez Creek and the Fraser River to benefit aquatic life. Full operation of LBD is expected to start in 2018 when approximately $2 million and 1,000 acre-feet of water will be dedicated to the cooperative effort after final permits are obtained.

Although full operation hasn't begun, the pilot program of LBD was launched this fall as the Fraser Flats Habitat Project. The project plans to improve a degraded 0.9-mile reach of the Fraser River just south of County Road 83. The project builds on restoration of the river upstream on the North 40 and in the Town of Fraser. Fraser Flats will extend improvements to fish habitat on the river.

Fraser Flats combines adjoining public and private sections to maximize efficiencies in costs and to set the stage for future public-private partnerships that benefit river health. County Road 83 will also open for public access and fishing when the project is completed.

The total cost for the project is $200,000 and is funded by a combination of funds committed by LBD cooperative efforts from Grand County, LBD partner contributions, a private landowner, and a Fishing Is Fun grant from Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Design and permitting is currently underway and revegetation of the reach will begin in the Spring of 2017. In fall 2017, construction in the river will take place. That work will concentrate flows into a narrower channel and provide a series of riffles and pools to enhance fish habitat.

If you're interested in helping volunteer to plant willows, you can sign up here.

Animas and Hermosa show good signs for Trout

Two recent Durango Herald Articles talk about the improvements of the Animas and the future of Hermosa Creek. Trout Unlimited has been on the forefront on both of these positive subjects. The Animas River has shown signs of improvement as the fish population is providing "encouraging" signs. As the Animas continues to face adversity and hardship from acid mine drainage, low water flows, urban runoff, and higher temperature, Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists have seen encouraging signs.

Over the last decade population studies on the Animas have shown a decline. Although this year there wasn't a turn around, CPW Biologist Jim White told the Durango Herald, "It's been a really nice fish year. It’s definitely been more abundant than years past.”

The study showed more young brown trout were able to survive over winter. Rainbow trout also had plentiful numbers meaning the survival rate was rising. The amount of quality trout- 14 inches or higher- doubled from last year's study.

“There is promising news about the current condition of the fishery, even in this first summer after the ‘spill,” said Ty Churchwell, Trout Unlimited Backcountry Coordinator. “With that said, none of this should diminish the fact that we have a major problem in the top of the watershed with draining mines and poor water quality. The Animas gorge below Silverton remains a ‘dead’ stretch of river, and we have lots of work to do to make this watershed healthy as a whole.”

While the Animas is improving, the future of Cutthroat Trout in Hermosa Creek also have a bright future as stream improvements have been made to prepare for Colorado River Cutthroat reintroduction.

Vegetation was planted and spawning areas were made along the stream to sustain a healthy future Cutthroat population.

At the October Board Meeting, participants will be able to take a tour of Hermosa Creek. The tour will focus on sites with the native trout project and visit some habitat improvements, tour participants will walk away with a better understanding of what it takes to work together and pull off a truly comprehensive conservation program.

Fly Fishing Field Trip

On September 15, Colorado TU joined Mountain Range High School of the Adams 12 School District for a fishing event on Hunters Glenn Lake in Thornton. About 30 students of all grades came to fish- some for the first time. The event is the capstone field trip to their Fly Fishing unit during a Physical Education course. Led by teacher, John Marquez, the students learned how to cast, select flies, handle fish, and how to be stewards of our natural resources. The program is part of the National Fishing in Schools Program (NFSP) that "educates students about fish, insects, aquatic environment, resource stewardship and conservation using fishing, and learning the skill of casting, as the instructional tool."

Trout Unlimited and Colorado Parks and Wildlife helped teach the kids about conversation efforts in the state and how students and anglers can be more involved. "Trout Unlimited has been a very valuable partner to us because it puts our students in touch a with an organization that is responsible for preserving our cold water fisheries.  TU helps us paint a larger picture to our students in our fly fishing unit that includes conservation as well as the skills necessary to enjoy our natural resources," said Marquez. "We could not do our day on the water without our partnership with Trout Unlimited."

At the event, about half the students caught a fish and when asked how many students would go fishing again, all said that they would like to continue fishing in the future.

CTU and MRHS, with help from the NSFP, students are being introduced into conservation and fly fishing at an early age. These students are the future of fishing and the next generation of environmental stewards.

In South Park with Sen. Bennet

By Randy Scholfield South Park is something special. This vast open landscape in western Colorado once was prized hunting lands for the Ute Indians. Today, the area remains a favorite outdoors playground for Colorado hunters, anglers and recreationists as well as a critical source of water for the Denver metro area.

Trout Unlimited and partners are working to keep it that way.

TU, the National Wildlife Federation and Park County officials met last week with Sen. Michael Bennet, who was in South Park to learn more about the BLM’s Master Leasing Plan for the area—part of the agency’s new Planning 2.0 approach, which emphasizes gathering input from local stakeholders early on to avoid, as much as possible, oil and gas leasing controversies.

Over lunch in Fairplay, Bennet heard from the group how much South Park means to its residents, and to the Front Range.

County Commissioner Mark Dowaliby, who like many residents visited the area years ago and never left, noted that Park County is 60 percent public lands. And while the county is staunchly conservative, he said, residents feel strongly about conservation and protecting the area’s natural resources.

The Master Leasing Plan provides an opportunity for locals to give the BLM feedback on what kind of management and protections they’d like to see. In simple terms, an MLP is a zoning plan to help ensure that we conserve our outdoor heritage, protect water supplies, and see that oil and gas development takes place responsibly and in the right places. That includes deciding where drilling shouldn’t occur.

“South Park is a tremendous migratory area,” said Bill Dvorak, a local rafting outfitter, TU member and National Wildlife Federation organizer. The area is home to large herds of deer, elk, pronghorn and moose. “That’s why NWF got involved. We identified this area as a place that needed different rules” for oil and gas leasing.

“This is the backyard of the Front Range,” TU’s Tyler Baskfield told Sen. Bennet. “We have 54 miles of Gold Medal waters, including the Dream Stream and Spinney Mountain Reservoir—and it’s within an hour and a half of anywhere on the Front Range.” The area, he pointed out, is a “huge driver for hunting and fishing in the state.”

  Meeting in South Park: Bill Dvorak, Sen. Michael Bennet, TU's Tyler Baskfield

Indeed, South Park generates some $17 million a year in wildlife-related revenue, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Moreover, Denver, Aurora and other Front Range communities depend on South Park reservoirs for more than one-third of their drinking water. That’s why Denver Water and other providers have supported the MLP process.

Sportsmen’s groups like TU and NWF aren’t opposed to responsible energy development. That said, they want drilling done right and carefully sited, because some natural areas are simply too valuable to develop.

South Park has proven underground oil and gas reserves, but the fields are fragmented and disjointed, making extraction more difficult. Still, the reserves are there, and they could be targeted in the future—all the more reason to put in place “smart from the start” rules that clarify what areas can be developed and how.

After the meeting, Sen. Bennet accepted the group’s invitation to do a little fishing on the Elevenmile stretch of the South Platte. While the fishing wasn’t on fire that afternoon, Sen. Bennet managed to land the one fish brought to net by the group—a nice brown trout. The senator called the Elevenmile canyon stretch “spectacular.”

Sen. Bennet fishing in Elevenmile Canyon stretch of South Platte: 'Spectacular' place

Asked what he is hearing from constituents while travelling the state, Sen. Bennet didn’t skip a beat, saying that Coloradans are tired of Washington, D.C.’s dysfunction: “They want us to work together to get something done.”

Maybe D.C. could learn something about the spirit of cooperation here in South Park. While it’s still getting started, the MLP already has prompted diverse local stakeholders, from ranchers to conservationists, to work together on key ideas for protecting public lands, including setbacks from Gold Medal streams and protection of critical game migration corridors, proving that collaboration is the key to solving public land management challenges.

Agency officials are expected to deliver the draft MLP for South Park this fall, which will then be open to further public input. We hope the BLM will stay on track to ensure this important process moves forward in a timely manner.

Thanks to Sen. Bennet for spending time in South Park and for championing the MLP’s collaborative, “smart from the start” approach. He clearly understands the value of South Park and the importance of balancing energy development with protection of our best wild places.

Randy Scholfield is TU’s director of communications for the Southwest region.

We Are Public Lands

A note from Chris Wood, CEO of Trout Unlimited:

This is not a dispassionate report.

The threat of losing our public lands looms large. That threat grows, passing like wildfire through halls of Congress and state capitols, spreading its invasive rhetoric in our communities. People with soft hands and expensive suits tell us

“It’s just transfer. It’s not like we’re selling them.”

It’s not just transfer. And it is a big deal.

The truth is that the distance between the effort to “transfer” public lands and to sell them is very short. Many of the states that would manage these lands have already sold significant portions of their formerly public state land to the highest seller. And we, as a country, have nothing to gain by such actions.

We have nothing to gain. And everything to lose.

Public lands are for anglers, hunters, hikers, campers, backpackers, energy producers, mountain climbers, berry pickers, ranchers, horse packers, birders, timber operators, miners, snowmobilers, ATVer’s, mountain bikers.

Nature’s enthusiasts. Advocates of open space and the guardians of our right to use it.

We are public lands. Public lands are our birthright as American citizens. And we will not give them up.

Statistics make the point. More than 70 percent of hunters use public lands in the West. Nearly 70 percent of native trout strongholds are on public lands. A growing majority of hunters and anglers oppose the sale of public lands.

Public lands create strongholds of important fish and wildlife habitat. Public lands provide important sources of clean water for tens of millions of people. Public lands are some of the last pristine places in the country.

Sure, these things are important.

But the bottom line is these are our lands. Yours. Mine. Ours. And a greedy few are trying to steal them from us.

Public lands are part of what define us as Americans. They are what remain of the great westward migration of the nation. They are the crucible upon which the character of the nation was formed. Our forebears left these lands to us, not so we could sell them to the highest bidder. They left them to us as an heirloom to pass on intact to the next generation. These lands are our birthright. They are a beacon of blinding and unwavering light on what it means to be free.

Whether you call it sale, transfer, or divestiture, allowing public lands to fall from public ownership would represent the triumph of cynicism over democracy. We — you and me, all of us who own these lands by virtue of our citizenship — can make sure that never happens.

We are public lands. And we will not step aside.

Sign the Petition to keep our public lands in the public hands!

Colorado: Outfitted for Public Lands

Fishing Through the Fall

For sportsmen, fall means opening day and stalking elk through the Colorado back country. The decrease in anglers (and football on the tube) generally lead to less crowds, but just because there are fewer people fishing, the fish are still there for the taking! As the weather cools, bugs and insects don't hatch as often as in the spring or summer. Making fall fly fishing a little more difficult, but that doesn't mean the fishing has stopped. Brown trout and kokanee salmon spawn in the fall and are moving to find the best place to make their redds,

Because of this, fishing where feeder streams and tributaries confluence with larger streams is a good place to look as trout will be moving into these areas to spawn. "While we never advocate fly fishing for actively spawning fish that are on shallow gravel redds, these tributaries allow anglers to predict where to find larger fish," according to Vail Valley Anglers. "Fish in deeper water that aren’t on beds are fair game and with a quick, gentle release they will be free to continue their mission to propagate the species. Be aware some small tributaries are closed during the spawn because the trout are simply too vulnerable in these tiny creeks."

Trout will also start to develop predictable eating patters when the summer hatches dwindle down. With fall approaching, the blue wing olive mayflies and midges are now the primary food source. Under the right circumstances, trout will still feed heavily as they prepare for the colder, winter months ahead.

With blue wing olives as the primary food source, blue wing fly patterns are a primary "go-to" for fall anglers. But according to Vail Valley Anglers, size is more important than pattern, "Flies mimicking these bugs (BWO) should range from #18-24. This is more important than the actual fly pattern. Choose flies in olive or grey such as the trusty Parachute Adams, Sparkle RS-2, CDC Loop Wing Emerger or JuJu Baetis."

But going smaller isn't always the best, especially if you're after the monster brown trout. As the brown trout are moving around looking to spawn and are becoming more territorial, using larger streamers may help you catch the largest fish.

For more information on a list of flies to use in the fall and techniques for these flies, check out Vail Valley Anglers, Colorado Fly Fisher Blog, or Orivs,

Volunteer Opportunity

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is looking for help to stock Rock Creek on September 21 from 8:00 am - 3:30 pm. Volunteers will be meeting in Jefferson CO in between Bailey and Fairplay on 285, but exact location is still being determined. Volunteers will be packing their backpacks full of Greenback Cutthroat Trout and hiking about 5 miles to stock them in Rock Creek, their new home. This is part of a larger Greenback Recovery effort being led by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Volunteers will need:

• Water
• Hiking Boots (no waders)
• Lunch
• Large Pack/Backpack for hauling fish
• Sunscreen

If you are interested in participating or want more information on this project please contact Stephanie Scott. sscott@tu.org or 720-354-2647. Volunteers who sign up will be given more detailed information about the volunteer day upon sign up.

Going Home to Public Lands

By Randy Scholfield Communications director for the Southwest region.

A couple weeks ago, my son and I decided on a last-minute camping outing and picked a popular area of high-country lakes in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, a short 30-minute drive above Boulder. He’s going to China soon to teach for a year, and this was a chance to get away, catch our breath and compare notes on life.

Want to know if America’s public lands are valued? Just try camping in them during a summer weekend in Colorado. The Indian Peaks, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park, is one of the most heavily used backcountry areas in the lower 48 because of its proximity to a large urban population.

I grew up in Kansas, which has one of the lowest percentages of public lands in the nation—only 1.9 percent of the state’s lands. My family was lucky to have access to some private places to hunt and fish, but for many people, their options were limited. They were locked out of the larger landscape.

Here on Colorado’s Front Range, there’s an embarrassment of public land riches in your backyard: Rocky Mountain National Park, Indian Peaks Wilderness, Arapahoe and Roosevelt national forests, and on and on. You couldn’t explore it all in a lifetime. It gives a sense of infinite possibilities.

More than a century ago, John Muir extolled the virtues of wild nature as a place of renewal for city folk: “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

Most Americans these days are urban or suburban dwellers. We need these places more than ever—as the summer crowds in public lands attest. When we arrived, we had to sit in a line of cars at the entrance for 10 minutes. Grouchiness ensued, and I nursed dark thoughts about how our public lands were being loved to death. We did manage to find a good tent site, in a developed campground near some hiking trails that led to a string of high-altitude lakes we wanted to explore and fish.

After setting up camp, we grabbed our rods and hit the trail and, for the first half-mile, walked bumper to bumper with a phalanx of chattering hikers. Again, I felt annoyed by the interlopers infesting our trail. But as we put trail behind us and the landscape opened up, my crabbiness gave way to fellow feeling.

These adventurers, with their daypacks, floppy hats and kids in tow, were there, like us, in search of their share of respite and adventure. In truth, this amazing place was big enough for all of us. Overhearing foreign accents, I even had a flash of patriotic pride: They had travelled far to experience this place that Americans enjoy as our common playground and birthright.

How lucky are we?

As the afternoon clouds built, we fished bracingly cold, sky-hued lakes and held small jewelled brookies in our hands before a late-afternoon squall jumped the jagged peaks and drove us back to camp.

That night, my son and I sat in camp amid the enclosing dark pines—a glittering canopy of stars overhead—and talked and laughed and connected in a way we hadn’t for a long time.

When he’s half-way around the world, I’ll remember this.

Gold King Mine Added to Superfund List

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the Gold King Mine and 47 other nearby sites on the Superfund cleanup list. These sites, all within the Bonita Peak Mining District, deposit an estimated 5.4 million gallons a day of heavy metal drainage into creeks within the Animas and San Juan river basins. The Superfund cleanup is a federal program that would allocate funds for the investigation and cleanup of some of America's "ticking time bombs" that would hinder human health and the environment.

"The Bonita Peak Mining District site consists of 48 historic mines or mining-related sources where ongoing releases of metal-laden water and sediments are occurring within Mineral Creek, Cement Creek and the Upper Animas. Near Silverton, Colorado, these drainages join to form the Animas River, which is used for drinking water, recreation and agricultural purposes," according to the EPA listing. "Contaminants found in these sources and in the surface water include arsenic, cadmium, copper, manganese, zinc, lead and aluminum. These contaminants impact fisheries that are harvested for human consumption, as well as wetlands and habitat for the threatened Canada lynx."

The Bonita Peak Mining District being added to the Superfund list is a step in the right direction that would help protect headwaters from mine drainage. Currently 40 percent of headwaters in the Western United States are affected by hard rock mining drainage. The TU-led San Juan Water Coalition has been fighting to address this issue by pushing for Good Samaritan legislation that would help clean up even more abandoned mines not addressed by the Superfund.

“Anglers and sportsmen strongly support this process,” said Trout Unlimited San Juan Mountains coordinator Ty Churchwell in a Denver Post article. “We’ll monitor the progress in the months and years to come to ensure the cleanup is done right and supports a high-quality fishery in the Animas. It’s our hope that Congress appropriates adequate funding to begin the cleanup soon." The town of Silverton, previously opposed to the Superfund program, now supports the listing along with local communities and law makers. “I’m hopeful that with this designation the EPA will continue to collaborate with local, tribal and state officials and work to protect the local economy, maximizing local employment opportunities where possible, and providing adequate funding to ensure the cleanup begins as quickly as possible,” said US Rep. Scott Tipton.

“Listing the Bonita Peak Mining District on the National Priorities List is an important step that enables EPA to secure the necessary resources to investigate and address contamination concerns of San Juan and La Plata Counties, as well as other downstream communities in New Mexico, Utah, and the Navajo Nation,” EPA regional administrator Shaun McGrath said in a statement.

“We look forward to continuing our efforts with the state of Colorado, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S Forest Service, tribal governments and our community partners to address the impacts of acid mine drainage on the Animas River.”